Standing vs. Sitting

Yo..

For the first 11 years that I did beats, I stood while doing them. I did that because the dude that showed me the ropes was a rock and roll keyboardist and he always worked with his on-stage gear.. which was stand-up. In 2004, I bought a production desk and started sitting to do my beats. Then I got really fat. I could FEEL my legs and belly turning into sludge!

Finally, it occurred to me: It started happening when I started sitting to do beats! Think about it, when you stand, you are actually using muscles to keep erect. Humans evolved to be either upright (hunting and gathering, fighting lions, running away from lions) or completely horizontal (sleeping, fucking). If you go against that formula (sitting at a desk and eating Wendy's) you're gonna get fat and dead. No fighting lions, no gathering, no fucking. You won't even be able to run away from your sister when she's in a drunken rage! Pathetic.

I started standing again after elevating my computer keyboard and mouse on the same production desk and damn, things are falling back into place homie! I STRONGLY suggest that everyone that is sitting down to do beats knock it off. It ain't worth the comfort, dog!

Don't get me wrong: if you're morbidly obese, you need to stop eating lardburgers and take the stairs for real. But standing while you spend hours producing is a really good start!

Here's an article on the subject of standing vs. sitting:

http://www.sixwise.com/Newsletters/2009/October/28/How-to-Boost-Your-Health-Just-by-Sitting-Less.htm

HOLLA!

Interview from Adam's World!

So my friend Adam has a blog, right? It's called Adam's World, see? He's a hip-hop slanted journalist straight out the CT, feel me? Boy's got skills, knowmsayin? You should go check it out, he's got a different perspective on shit, ya heard?

Oh yeah, also, he did an interview with me and has me as artist of the week.. so you know he's got taste!

Check it out, y'all!!

And leave the man some comments!!

Auditioning Drum Loops

About half of the time that I get busy on a beat in Reason 4, I start with a music sample instead of the drums. About half of the time that I do THAT, I like to listen to breakbeats to get ideas about how to program the drums over it. A lot of times I'll use the breakbeat with a high-pass filter applied and then match kick and snare to it.. but sometimes this method poses the following problem.

If you have a commercial library of breakbeats in WAV (instead of REX2) format, then a lot of the time they are arranged in categories of tempo e.g., beat loops of 90, 100, 110 BPM's in separate folders.



OK, so what if your sample loop is not the same tempo as the drums in a given folder? What if you think that time-stretch is for pussies the way that I do? What if the idea of adjusting the pitch of each and every loop you load causes you to ignore that dope folder of super-official WAV breakbeats? I used to do that but later came up with a fix!

First, load up an NN-XT sample-player (it's NOT a sampler and I ain't gonna call it that!) and then load a drum loop from the folder you wish to audition. Next, draw in a 2 bar clip. Go into edit mode and depending on the length of the beat loops in your folder, draw either a 1 or 2 bar note at C3 (important, because this is where Reason places the root key by default).


Now, go to your sample calculator. I use Deep Sound's but whichever you use will be fine. In my example, the music loop that I want to match is at 103.135 BPM and the drum loops I want to audition are 100 BPM. You can see from the picture that the amount by which I am supposed to adjust the pitch is + 0.53 semitones. Now it is time to adjust the beat loop that you have loaded into the NN-XT.



Again, in my example, I need to adjust the pitch of my drum loop to + 0.53 semitones. Since the NN-XT fine tune knob only adjusts to + or - 50 cents, I need to actually raise the loop UP (+) 1 semitone and then DOWN (-) .47 semitones. That will come to +.53 in the end. Now when I press play, the drum loop and the sample arrangement play at the same tempo.. but the magic comes next.



Now, press play on your sequencer transport. Highlight the zone of your sample within the NN-XT. Using the up and down arrows in the LOAD SAMPLE field, you can audition all of the loops within the tempo-appropriate breakbeat folder on the fly! Choose the one you like and CRUSH IT!

Aight, I think we're done here!

My Reason 4 Workflow

I thought that I should begin by laying out some particulars about my workflow. I sure ain't saying that this is the correct way but it has worked for me really well. Like anyone else, I've developed my patterns for producing over many years so it's been extensively fine-tuned at this point. It's my hope that this could be of some use to someone that is just getting started with the beat game via Reason!

Here's a rundown of what I have on the desktop that's relevant to my workflow:

Reason 4: This is the only DAW that I use. I love it to the bitter end but like all DAWS, it has certain strengths and limitations. A lot of the elements in my workflow have to do with overcoming the limitations inherent in the software. Mostly these have to do with the lack of sampling and recording capabilities but also with the somewhat clunky file browser and limited file-type compatability.

Sound Forge 9.0: This is where I do the sampling aspect of my work. It's really good for finding good loops and you can fine-tune like crazy! All of the usual sample-editing features are here. Also, since I sometimes use MP3s, Sound Forge let's me save to WAV format, which Reason accepts. This is the sample editor that I like but I'm pretty sure that any one will be dope for the job.

Recycle: I just couldn't get down the way I do without this beautiful piece of software! Since chopping up samples is key to what I do, I spend a LOT of time working with this. It can find chop points for you but sometimes you need to really get down in it and find the cuts yourself. Recycle is official!

11 Music Samples.. link: OK, this is a link to a very helpful website by Deepsound Music. It is a site full of sample calculators that allow you to find out just how much you need to tweak a sample to make it match a certain pitch or tempo. There are also delay calculators that are mad helpful. Since Reason doesn't support time stretch (and I personally wouldn't use it if it did) this is really handy for getting your drum or sample loops in the pocket with the rest of your beat.

Workspace Folder: This is the place where I save little things that I have tweaked in Recycle or Soundforge. You can save everything to your desktop but it can get really cluttered in a hurry. So for instance, if I have just loaded a WAV into Recycle, chopped it up and saved it as a REX2 file, this folder is where it goes. It just keeps things nice and neat to help minimize mistakes!

Reason Refills and Soundz shortcuts, and the Search Temp Folder: OK, this is the stuff that helps me the very most. I keep these shortcuts and folder on my desktop to help compensate for some of the vagaries of the Reason file system. First of all, the Reason browser is MAD slow for searching for files. I would NEVER use the Reason search to locate specific sounds; the Windows search engine is WAY better.

So for example, if I'm looking for a "laugh" sound, I open the Soundz folder and do a search for it. After all the hits come up, I COPY them to the Search Temp folder and then open the file browser in Reason and point it toward it. That way, I can audition the sounds and choose the one I want without having to wait sixteen years for Reason to search. After I finish the beat and save it (having made the appropriate Song Self-Contain settings!) I clear out the Search Temp folder.

I keep the Refill folder shortcut around mostly to help with the weird way in which some Refills are saved. For some reason, the way that Reason sees the refills is different from the way they appear from within the Windows file system, i.e., in logical alphabetical or chronologically added order. Some of the Refills don't even have the correct names displayed in the Reason browser, let alone being alphabetically organized! So if I'm having a hard time locating a Refill in the Reason browser, I just look in the Refill folder and find it with ease!

Well, I think we're done here. Next time, I'm going to start talking about actual production techniques.. so that ought to be more fun. Hope this schooled somebody out there though!

My Reason History

Yo, I thought I would start this blog out with a little history and then, next time, talk about my Reason 4 set-up. Since part of my aim with this blog is to further the hip-hop game through Reason, I thought that I'd better explain how I get down in case some new cats wanted to follow along.

Back when I started in '91 or so, there were no DAWs, at least so far as I know. It was all about gear and records and actual studios. I used tactile gear for the longest and eventually my apartments started to look like used gear shops. Plus, I was always broke because I was always gear-chasing and buying records and studio-time. I've been through them all, MPC(s), MV-8000, EPS, E4K, Triton, RM1-x, RS-7000, whatever. When DAWs came out I was like, "nah." Yup, I was one of them dudes that whined about the sound not being the same, the swing not being the same, wanting to bang on pads, yada-yada.

One day I bought a laptop with Reason 2 already installed on it. A year or so later, I actually opened it and played with the Redrum and thought, "Yo, this sounds kinda crunchy!" Soon after, I MIDIed up my MV-8000 to it and started using the sounds. Eventually it got to be too much of a hassle and I started looking at the Reason sequencer. Yo, that was it son! I copped Reason 3, then 4 and I ain't looked back since!

In the last couple years, cats have been saying the same thing when we talk beats. They ask me what gear I use and I tell them just Reason 4. A lot of them assume that I'm using hardware and some mastering software because of the "authentic" hip-hop sound that I get. The only reason that I can come up with is that I had my ears trained using all that old hardware. When I started using Reason I just naturally pursued that sound. I never heard all that mess about Reason just being for techno so I didn't get swerved. I hope to show interested parties some of the techniques I use when I do beats..

I think we're just about done here for now!